Interesting, though I'm not exactly sure what these are used for. Simply scanning in a clay sculpture, for instance, would result in a ridiculously heavy model.

CupOWonton

03-15-2006, 12:20 AM

Ive seen this specific piece of technology before. Its acurate no doubt. But youre still generating a horrible mesh you wouldnt ACTUALY use in a visualisation. Instead, you'd build around it with poly modeling or nurbs. I will stress that it is acurate though, and I believe it scans and maps an image onto it as well.(Im too lazy to open the window again to take a look)

beaker

03-15-2006, 01:56 AM

Interesting, though I'm not exactly sure what these are used for. Simply scanning in a clay sculpture, for instance, would result in a ridiculously heavy model.This is how all laser scanners work. We always have had to remodel them in the past. The nice thing these days is you can just create a normal map and displace a lowrez model out to the scan without having to remodel it.

$2500 for something like this is amazing! Right now the cheapest laser scanner is 20k and that is without any software.

Bonedaddy

03-15-2006, 02:14 AM

That's pretty f-ing amazing. Now all we need is a cheap 3d scanner, and people can start making their own action figures.

jeremybirn

03-15-2006, 05:26 AM

Ive seen this specific piece of technology before. Its acurate no doubt. But youre still generating a horrible mesh you wouldnt ACTUALY use in a visualisation. Instead, you'd build around it with poly modeling or nurbs. I will stress that it is acurate though, and I believe it scans and maps an image onto it as well.(Im too lazy to open the window again to take a look)

What you get out of a 3D scan is basically the same thing as what you create in Z-Brush. Yes, it starts out as a dense cloud of points that you wouldn't want to individually rig or animate, but that data can be useful when converted into displacement (or normal) maps and a low-poly control cage you can sketch over the data.

Some of the software for processing scanned data is quite good. Paraform lets you sketch curves right over the surface of whatever you've scanned to define the topology, making edge loops and control cages that conform to the scanned shape, and then bakes out the maps for the details that will be displaced onto the surfaces.

I can't wait for head scanners to come down in price like this; maybe if you provide your own HD camcorder and it processes the signal?

-jeremy

paintbox

03-15-2006, 07:47 AM

Wow. Amazing really. Combine this with the news a few weeks ago about 3D printers coming down in price, and I wouldn't see surprised if we could see some 3D printshops in the near future.

The consumer market is a lot smaller I think so I don't think we'll see everyone having a 3D scanner/printer.

beaker

03-15-2006, 06:41 PM

Wow. Amazing really. Combine this with the news a few weeks ago about 3D printers coming down in price, and I wouldn't see surprised if we could see some 3D printshops in the near future.paintbox, do you have a link for the printer?

paintbox

03-15-2006, 08:06 PM

Took me a bit to find the article, but here it is :

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/02/3d_systems_desktop_3d_printer/

At $14.900 it is probably very affordable. I think a 'normal' printing press might reach those figures. But still out of reach for the average CGTalker probably :)

ndog

03-15-2006, 09:34 PM

www.3DArtToPart.com (http://www.3DArtToPart.com)

They do 3D printing not scanning.

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